


And a fair thing to hunt him

by disenchanted



Category: 14th Century CE RPF, Richard II - Shakespeare
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Loss of Virginity, M/M, medieval Catholicism, shamelessly mining Master of Game for medieval A/B/O terminology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:01:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22778356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disenchanted/pseuds/disenchanted
Summary: At Eastertide 1399, Hal is knighted by his king, and becomes a man.
Relationships: Henry V of England/Richard II of England
Comments: 9
Kudos: 31





	And a fair thing to hunt him

**Author's Note:**

> A loose cross between Shakespeare fic and historical RPF, based on Richard II's knighting of the future Henry V during his Irish campaign of 1399. Hal is older in this fic than he was in real life -- I don't specify his age in-text but I'm imagining him as around 16-18. 
> 
> The omegaverse concept here is that male omegas go into heat but can't bear children, so sex between male alphas and male omegas is still considered sodomitical.

The king, in blue and gold, lighted from behind by the stained glass chancel windows, looked like an angel. Hal wore a white silk kirtle, and absorbed his colour from his sovereign, who knelt from his great height to affix a gilt spur to Hal’s right boot, then rose again and with slender uncalloused hands wielded the sword that dubbed Hal his knight. In the final gesture of the ritual, the king took Hal’s clean face in his hands and kissed him on the lips. The king’s mouth was gentle, and stayed against Hal’s long enough that Hal felt it fully and would be able to remember it. 

The change started then: Hal, who would not recognise what it was until later, felt a heat behind his eyes like the start of tears, and was ashamed at being moved to emotion like this, before his sovereign, in the first moment of his manhood. Nearly a year in Ireland had not relieved Hal of all his resentment towards the king who had exiled his father, but he was grateful now, as freely and transparently as he was grateful to Christ. It was Easter Day, and Hal was in a state of grace, and beyond the stained-glass crucifixion, the sun was rising. Having knelt with the king and prayed through the night before, having fasted to receive the host, Hal felt faint and dizzy, extra-holy; he looked ahead and saw the king himself beaming out coloured light, illuminating the chapel, filling Hal’s eyes with the glow.

After the ceremony, there was a feast finer than any they had had since coming to this savage island. The butchers had dispatched fifty lambs, seventy oxen, a hundred sheep, two hundred pigs; the hunters had brought in five hundred hares, a hundred birds, a hundred deer. The sauces were so thick with ginger and cinnamon that Hal felt his lips and throat tingling. He had meant to be careful not to drink too much while sitting at the king’s table, but his mouth was dry; he kept wetting it with sips of the king’s wine, which had been brought from his birthplace, Bordeaux. The roast lamb was delicious on his tongue and strange in his stomach. He wasn’t ill, he wasn’t full, it was that he felt overnourished somehow, overwhelmed by the meeting of his flesh and this flesh. Maybe he had got too used to the privation of Lent, all those unsatisfying fish-based imitations of meat.

Hal was aware of his own body in a way that should have been precluded by his drunkenness. He felt his tongue behind his teeth, his heart behind his ribs, his pinched toes and crossed ankles, the spread of his thighs on the wooden bench; he felt his prick and balls snug between his thighs, and felt a faint arousal, which embarrassed him. During Lent he had abstained from prick-related misdeeds, and though he had woken several times to find his bedding stained, being in the king’s presence had always frightened him sufficiently to prevent lust. Now the king was three seats down from him, silently surveying the tapestried hall of his Castle of Dublin, and Hal was willing himself not to get hard and getting half-hard anyway, sweating in the fashionable fur-lined houppelande the king had given him to wear for the feast. His face was so flushed that it itched. Did he have a fever? Did his blood need letting? He felt the kind of nausea he usually felt when he had had too little food; he couldn’t breathe deeply enough. The Duke of Surrey, who sat next to him, was trying to talk to him about the Irish wars, and Hal’s ears rushed loudly enough to drown him out. 

Pretending he needed the lavatory, Hal wobbled out of the hall, and got so far as the corridor that led towards the staircase that led to the block of bedchambers he was staying in before his legs weakened enough that he sunk to the floor, clutching at the wall to slow his descent. The noise filtering in from the hall echoed weirdly around him, and his vision blurred; he couldn’t quite make out the face of the man who approached him, and couldn’t quite make sense of what he was saying. He was only half-aware of being picked up and carried and put down again in bed, though he recognised quite keenly the solidity of the nobleman who held him, and the sweet watery scent of his sweat. 

He hadn’t had enough wine to be drunk like this. He knew what it felt like to be fucking wasted: when you got to the point where you couldn’t stand or see straight, you were more or less insensible, you could drive a nail through your foot and not feel it. He was hazy and tongue-tied, but his sense of touch and smell was so acute that it hurt. He was in his own bed, stripped of his outer garments, surrounded by his own dense boyish scent, weighed down by heavy layers of quilts, and his nausea was so strong that he writhed in discomfort. He couldn’t answer the questions that were being put to him by the men who surrounded his bed; when one of them came too near he leant over the side of the bed and puked everything he’d eaten at the feast into the rushes covering the floor.

‘What’s happening to me?’ he asked. He wasn’t sure who, exactly, he was asking. He was panicking; he would have worried he’d caught plague if he wasn’t so stupidly aroused. He could actually feel his heartbeat throbbing in his prick. It was so urgent that it felt to him like pain, and as one would instinctively reach to the site of a wound to stop the bleeding, he reached down to cup his prick through his hose, pressing it tight under his palm, squeezing it, jerking his hips up. 

The face of the man standing closest to him came into focus, and Hal recognised him as the Duke of Aumerle, his great-uncle York’s son, one of the king’s particular favourites. Aumerle looked worried, but perhaps not like he would have been if he suspected plague. It seemed like more of a social worry, like someone had done something to which the king’s reaction had an equal chance of being pleasant or unpleasant. Under any other circumstance Hal would have died before wanking in front of Aumerle; now the relief it afforded was too great to forgo.

‘Don’t worry,’ Aumerle hastened to assure him, ‘you’re safe here.’ 

Hal had begun to suspect what was happening. The process of recognition, however, was slowed by his mounting horror of acknowledging it. He had read lascivious descriptions of this in pious, chastising exempla: within the sacrament of marriage it was a blessing, a holy union of two like-but-unlike things, while for the unwed it was something to be shamefully endured. He had known it would have to happen someday, one way or the other, but he had never thought about it; there was too much else for him to care about. His father was in exile, his grandfather was ill, the king was trying to conquer Ireland, and the appellants were as unhappy with the king as they had been before the Merciless Parliament, only now Hal was a man and would not escape political upset simply on account of his youth. Hal had always thought would marry later, when the right alliance presented itself, and until then he wouldn’t worry about fucking. But now he did want—he wanted very badly—he needed, physically, like he needed food and drink—very badly!—to be fucked. 

Having enough wherewithal to keep from voicing this aloud, Hal said instead, ‘I’m very thirsty.’ 

Aumerle’s servant fed Hal sips of pure, cold drinking water. Aumerle himself had stepped out of the chamber; Hal couldn’t tell what was being said, but he heard his voice in the corridor, then the king’s. The water seemed to dry on Hal’s tongue; his throat was so parched that it hurt when he swallowed, and he dribbled and spat. His ears rang until he couldn’t hear anything else besides the ringing and the king’s intemperate voice. 

‘Get back,’ Hal told the servant; he wanted so much to have someone touch him that he was afraid he might hurt the man, bruise him with grabbing and yanking. He gasped, he groaned, he kicked his heels against the mattress. He flung the quilts back; he tore his hose off and pulled his undershirt up to his chest, stripping himself like he was burning. He wanked himself furiously and spent, shaking, and found that after a few precious moments of relief he was as miserably needy as before. Richard had done this to him, he thought: when Richard kissed him that morning, something in him had been released, like an animal from a trap. 

It went on like that for a terrible long while. Hal felt Richard’s departure as a slow blunting of his soreness; it was only when Richard had gone that Hal recognised his proximity had made the desire worse. For hours Hal shivered and trembled, too-cold and too-hot in turns. The sweat on his palms kept his prick from chafing as he tugged it, again and again releasing himself without relief. He was well-attended by Richard’s servants, who cleaned him with fine cloth and fed him water when he could take it, and he recognised that the men who kept watch over him were neuter, neither hart nor hind, so were unaffected by Hal’s rut. Feverishly he thought of how lucky his mother had been, and the lovely Queen Anne, to have been so well cared-for: their husbands had always come to them when they were in their love, and though Hal had known very little of what went on between husband and wife, it had never seemed frightening or cruel. 

Eventually Hal’s arms ached so much that though his prick was still stiff he couldn’t keep pulling at it. He rolled himself onto his stomach and, muffling his cries in his pillow, let the friction between his prick and the mattress do the work for him. With his arse bared, he felt sorely the absence of a hart to mount him: there was an unquenchable emptiness so frustrating that he wept. He fell asleep like that, sometimes slipping for a minute into a dream of satisfaction, then half-wakening to recognise he was still unfulfilled.

* * *

When Hal woke it was in a different bed, on a bigger, softer mattress, and careful servants’ hands were turning him onto his back. He was naked, and though gooseflesh rose on his skin he was still sweating-hot. There was a fire going in the hearth. Above him he thought he saw the sky, and realised as his vision cleared that it was a blue velvet canopy embroidered with golden stars. Pale rainy Irish daylight came through the gaps in the bed-curtains; he must have made it, he realised, through the night. He was exhausted as if he’d never slept. His prick was still hard, and it was chafed, now, and he could feel beneath his back the damp spot where he must have been unconsciously rubbing and spending, doing nothing to abate his arousal. 

Richard was close by: Hal felt it. The full surface of his skin, every squirming bit of his innards too, prickled with the hind’s instinctive awareness of its counterpart. Though his throat was sore and swollen he said, ‘My lord.’ 

As he approached, Richard’s scent thickened so intensely that Hal choked on it. Beneath the rosewater with which he anointed himself, he smelled of cool damp well-washed flesh, and the watery fluid that came from the yard before seed; and beneath that he smelled of a hart who had begun to respond to the presence of a hind in its season. He sat on the bed next to Hal, and reached out to brush Hal’s hair away from his hot forehead. Hal quivered; he tilted his head to press open pleading kisses to Richard’s wrist, which Richard tolerated. He wore a pale-blue damask gown with ermine lining the collar and sleeves; the fur on the sleeves tickled Hal’s face. 

‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ said Hal, ‘I can’t help it, I can’t help myself. You shouldn’t come so close.’ 

‘No, darling, it’s all right,’ said Richard, a little shortly. He let the tips of his first two fingers rest against Hal’s mouth; without quite realising what he was doing, Hal opened his mouth and suckled at Richard’s fingers. Richard tolerated this too, recognising that it could not be helped. ‘I’ve come to take care of you. Do you know, the others wanted to let you suffer. Despenser suggested that I should appoint a servant to hold your rut. I said I wouldn’t stand for it. I’m the one who’s responsible for your welfare; I should be the one to do it, this first time at least.’ 

Richard’s scent was on Hal’s tongue like a flavour, like a chewed-up seed-soaked rose, making his mouth water. His thighs and stomach were tense with effort; he hadn’t touched his prick since Richard had sat down, and it was leaking. With a deep rush of humiliation Hal felt, between his legs, the first spurt of the sticky-wet fluid that the hind produced in anticipation of being held. He shuddered as if at a fresh swell of pain; he latched his teeth around Richard’s fingers. For a moment Richard’s eyes shut, his thin red lips parted, his delicate nostrils flared. When he opened his eyes again, his pupils were so wide that they nearly occluded the blue of his irises. 

‘Open your mouth,’ said Richard. 

Hal opened his mouth and let Richard’s fingers fall out. Pathetically he said, ‘My father will be so unhappy.’

‘Your father has always been unhappy. He’s an unhappy man. And he’s not here. Don’t think about it, you’ll only upset yourself. You’re in your love now, whether you like it or not. I’ll go away if you like, but if you go through it alone it’ll make you ill.’

‘Please don’t go away.’ 

‘No?’ Richard was smiling, close-mouthed. He was beautiful, and Hal felt for the first time the male hind’s useless sinful urge to be calved. He imagined being taken as Richard’s concubine, bearing child after illegitimate child. Of course even if Hal were female Richard would never calve him: it would be too dangerous to make bastards that might have a claim to the crown. 

‘If you don’t hold me, my lord, I might die.’ 

‘Oh my pet. Oh you poor thing.’ Richard was gently laughing. ‘You’ve got it very bad, haven’t you? I’ve heard that that was what it was like for your mother, too. That was why you were born so early in the marriage, your father couldn’t bear not to breed her when she first presented. Look at you, you’re positively shaking. And you stink to high heaven. I’d always suspected you were a hind, mind you: you have your mother’s colouring.’

Without him quite realising it, Hal’s right hand had migrated towards his prick, and he rubbed at himself ineffectually. When Richard put his hand over Hal’s, his mouth and thighs fell open, baring up to Richard all his secret inner flesh. Richard picked Hal’s hand up and dropped it at his side; he smoothed his palms over Hal’s thighs, teasing them wider, pulling his legs up so that they were bent at the knee and the bare soles of his feet rested on the mattress. The warm animal scent of Hal was overpowering. The Duke of Aumerle, standing by at a respectful distance, was covering his nose and mouth with one of Richard’s embroidered handkerchiefs. 

‘You’ll want to wriggle about,’ Richard told Hal, ‘but do try to stay still. It’s bad manners to wriggle, it makes you seem like rather a lower order of creature. Ned, the rose-oil?’ 

Pulling his sleeves back, Richard coated his handsome long hands in the oil Aumerle brought him. Hal was wet enough that oil was superfluous; Richard just liked to smell good. He put his left hand on Hal’s lower stomach and held him down as he felt with his right hand between Hal’s legs, mixing the sweet rose-oil with the musk that dripped from Hal’s arse. As soon as the tips of Richard’s first two fingers breached his arsehole Hal forgot he had been told to stay still; he dug his heels into the mattress and fluttered his thighs open, crying out, twisting his hips in a ridiculous effort to draw Richard’s fingers in deeper. There was no resistance, no discomfort: his body recognised that this was what he had been made for, and yielded. Shushing Hal, Richard got his two fingers in to the last knuckle and with them mimicked the deep curving thrusts of a prick. Hal spent spontaneously, without quite comprehending what was happening; his jaw was trembling, his front teeth cut into his lip, his thighs were split so wide he thought his muscles might tear. He shut his eyes and saw stars sparking and fading, and opened his eyes and saw the stars on the canopy puslating like candle-flames. 

At last Hal let out his breath, and felt relief, and thought it must have finished. His prick was softening. Hoarsely he said, ‘Thank you,’ and struggled to gather the strength to turn his head and meet Richard’s eyes. He would be humiliated later, he knew, but he was grateful to Richard for bringing him through so easily. Richard’s fingers were still in him, and he was just going to say that he was all right and Richard could stop that now when he felt the awful twinge of returning desire, and sobbed. 

‘Shh, shh.’ Richard had slipped a third finger into him, and was buggering him wonderfully, which made it all worse. Even in the midst of such extremity Hal wondered how his father would feel about this. Hal was squirming: Richard’s fingers were curled up in such a way that the tips of them rubbed against that small internal organ of the male hind which in its female counterpart encouraged reproduction. The pleasure was centred there, not in Hal’s prick, which carried only residual arousal. There was a space in Hal that pulsed with the absence of Richard’s yard. 

Imagining Richard mounting him, Hal spent again, wetting Richard’s hand and his expensive featherbed with his musk. He thought the relief might last a little longer this time, if only so that he could catch his breath before the next round, and found that it dissolved even more quickly than before. Within a minute he was trying to fuck himself on Richard’s hand, wriggling just like he’d been told not to. 

‘Stay _still_ ,’ Richard snapped, and if Hal had not been so deep in his rut he would have been terrified of such disapprobation. But the king’s moods were changeable, and Hal could see it in Richard’s face when his frustration faded. 

Richard’s golden hair fell about his face, shining faintly in the cool light; strands stuck to his cheeks and his temples where his sweat had gone tacky. His swan-white cheeks were blotched with red, like they were when he was angry or drunk or riding hard. As he fucked Hal with his fingers he frowned in solemn concentration. 

‘Richard—’ Blazing with the shock of having called the king by his Christian name, Hal did the only thing he could, which was to say something worse: ‘Richard, fuck me, please. Fuck me now, I can’t wait any longer, I need you to fuck me.’ 

‘For heaven’s sake. I know you’re in your love, but this is really too much. You’re spoilt. Have I spoilt you?’ Keeping his hand and wrist still and steady, he began the rubbing again, so slowly and softly that Hal nearly shrieked with frustration. Hal’s abdomen clenched under Richard’s left hand; his legs trembled, his front teeth scraped another layer of flesh from his raw bottom lip. Tears welled hot in his eyelashes and stung down his cheeks. ‘After you come again you’ll be ready, I daresay. But if I were to do it before you were ready it would hurt you. You’re lucky you have me here to open you up: some harts will mount a hind straightaway, and hurt them terribly.’ 

The thought of being flung down and buggered roughly should have upset Hal, and made him sorry to be what he was. But imagining Richard doing it, anticipating Richard doing it, brought him just to the crest of pleasure. Then he imagined nothing, only watched Richard swallowing, licking his lips, as Hal’s arse contracted around his fingers. His prick jerked too, but it had long since stopped letting out seed; it only oozed a slow constant stream of clear liquid. 

After that Richard withdrew and stood, cleaning his hands in a bowl of water and sipping a glass of wine. His absence at once relieved Hal and hurt him; the desire was no less strong than before, but even through his need he felt an encroaching exhaustion. He wanted to sleep, and knew that if he did he would suffer just like the night before. 

A servant helped Hal sip from a cup of water, which went down more easily than he had expected. He drank, hiccuping and gulping, until the cup was empty. Then he was cleaned with a wet cloth, lifted up by two fit servants so that a third could scrub away the musk that coated the insides of his thighs and the cleft of his arse. A fresh cloth wiped the sweat and tears from Hal’s face. 

A silvered platter of cheeses, salted meats, and dried fruits had been brought up from the kitchens. Richard said, ‘Oh good!’ He ate a bit of fruit and meat, daintily, then offered some to Aumerle, who shook his head. Aumerle looked queasily pale; he was daubing his handkerchief with fresh lavender-oil and covering his face up again.

As Richard turned towards the wide glazed window Hal saw a strain in his expression that he somehow hadn’t seen up close. He looked like he had been exhausted by some great effort of endurance. At the same time there was the sharpness of restrained hunger, like he was a lion waiting for just the right moment to waylay his prey. His cheeks were richly red, his eyes gleaming with the light from the window. He swept his hair back from his face and tilted his head up, and closed his eyes and sighed mournfully. Then he squared his shoulders and said, ‘All right, then,’ and lifted his arms up so that his servants could remove his gown and undershirt, which was all he wore. 

Though Hal had been nearly always in Richard’s company since his father’s exile, he had never seen the king naked. He seemed taller and more majestic now than he did in his best gowns. His body was lean and narrow and sunless-white, but strong, bound with elegant muscle. His yard, rising stiff from its bed of wheat-gold, was as red as his cheeks, and thick as any Hal had seen. Richard was looking at Hal, sprawled out on the bed with his freshly-cleaned legs open and his prick still hard, like he looked down from his dais, pronouncing judgment against his unruly lords, and even as Hal ached to be fucked he recognised that all of Richard’s sweet words and gentle gestures sprung from the irrepressible need to make Hal subject, totally and finally, to his natural sovereign. 

Lying next to him, embracing him, Richard kissed Hal. He began like he had in the chapel, touching his lips to Hal’s, then pried Hal’s mouth open with his tongue until Hal brought his own tongue up in response. Softly, as if savouring some delicious morsel, Richard sucked at the tip of Hal’s tongue and Hal’s full bottom lip, and with a nudge encouraged Hal to do the same to him. Having distracted him with kissing, Richard reached between Hal’s legs and ventured a finger into his arse again, testing its yield and its wetness.

When Hal moaned Richard said, ‘That’s it, darling. You’ve done very well.’ Hal shook against him, like a tender newborn creature sharing in the warmth of its mother. 

‘Richard, please,’ Hal whispered, not wanting the others to hear. He felt Richard’s cock against his hip, smearing fluid against his sweat-damp skin. Now that he had felt it he could imagine it inside of him, thickening to fill him. 

‘Don’t beg.’ Richard was breathing hard; his eyes were shut, and he was trembling too, as if he was working to keep from some more violent motion. ‘Be quiet. I’m going— All right. Oh, God forgive me.’ He kissed Hal again, and then he said, ‘Turn over.’ 

Hal knew by instinct what position Richard wanted him in: he got onto his hands and knees in the centre of the bed, and spread his legs and bent his head down, baring his arse to Richard like any other bitch in heat would do. He felt his musk drip down his thighs, and his mouth dropped open in sheer horror of what he had been turned into. He was literally an animal; his mind was still his own, but his body was inhuman. Did Richard feel like an animal too? Richard was on his knees behind Hal, holding Hal down by his hips. When the tip of Richard’s yard pressed against Hal’s arsehole Hal curled his fingers into the mattress and sank back on Richard’s yard till his arse-cheeks were flush against the tops of Richard’s thighs and Richard was in him fully. It was the first real pleasure Hal had felt; it felt so good he forgot to hate it. 

‘Oh God, please fuck me,’ Hal begged, and went on begging even as Richard bent down and covered Hal’s hands with his own, and latched his teeth to Hal’s shoulder to keep him in place as he fucked him. 

If Hal had known how enormous Richard’s yard would feel inside of him, he would have been more apprehensive. He understood why Richard had fucked him with his fingers three times beforehand; he was wet and open in a way he hadn’t conceived it was possible to be, and still Richard’s yard filled him to the point that he almost couldn’t stand it. His lip was bleeding from being bitten; he saw a fleck of blood fall to the white linen below his face. When he let his lip go, he cried out so loudly that Richard put two fingers in his mouth again to shut him up. Hal took the fingers in his mouth as gratefully as he took the prick in his arse. At first he rocked back against Richard in an effort to fill himself better; then Richard buggered him hard enough that he could do nothing but keep himself up, and then he could not even keep himself up. Richard had to prop Hal’s hips up with a pillow to keep him at an angle to be fucked, and then Hal’s prick rubbed against the soft linen of the pillowcase, soaking it through. It felt so good, it felt almost perfect, except that there was that final thing Hal’s body demanded. He couldn’t think of anything else; he wanted nothing else.

Hal bit Richard’s fingers; Richard yelped in pain, but fought to keep his fingers in Hal’s mouth until Hal bit them hard enough that he broke skin and drew blood. Before Richard could shout at him Hal said, ‘Richard, breed me, please, you have to.’

‘Oh God help me. Hal, why?’

‘Because I need it,’ said Hal. 

Whether Richard would punish Hal for his obstinacy later, Hal didn’t know. Richard was more creature than man now; it seemed as if he were shifting physically into something enormous and wild. He held Hal’s hip steady and bit his neck until he, too, broke the skin and drew blood, whereupon Hal collapsed into submission. Hal was still and silent, and filled completely, and Richard was still and silent on top of him, his damp chest pressed to Hal’s damp back. It was a long few minutes before Hal realised what was happening, but when it got to a certain point, he knew: the _perche_ , the mass of tissue at the base of the hart’s yard that when unaroused was scarcely thicker than the shaft, was swelling inside of him, locking them together. 

Probably Richard hadn’t meant for this to happen: a hind could be held through its rut without being bred, just as a man could fuck a woman without spending inside of her. But once it had begun it couldn’t be stopped. It was already too much for Hal to take; he felt like he might tear apart, and whimpered. His musk dripped down his thighs, his blood dripped down his shoulder. He was suddenly frightened. Richard wasn’t letting go of Hal’s neck or his hands; he was keeping Hal in place until they were fully joined. 

‘Oh Christ, I can’t do it,’ Hal gasped, ‘I can’t, you have to get off of me.’ 

Richard, who always had something to say, said nothing. Hal’s flesh throbbed where Richard’s teeth were sunk into his neck. Panicking, struggling for breath, Hal cried: ‘Please, stop! I know I told you to do it, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I can’t. Get off me, get off, Richard, please.’ 

A voice that sounded rather like Richard’s told him, ‘Darling, you can’t stop now. You’ll have to wait it out.’ Aumerle was sitting on the side of the bed, just like Richard had done before, and petting Hal’s hair, which was the only bit of him not covered by Richard. 

The foreign presence calmed Hal: it reminded him that there were things in the world besides him and the king. Giving Hal’s head a last pat, Aumerle said, ‘This bit only lasts for a couple of minutes, and afterwards he’ll be sensible again.’ 

‘How do you know?’ Hal asked. ‘Has he done this to you before?’ 

‘That’s for me to know,’ said Aumerle, which obviously meant yes. Or maybe it meant no, and he was embarrassed he’d never been bred by the king and now he was here watching it happen to the Duke of Hereford’s son. 

‘I literally feel like he might kill me,’ said Hal. 

‘That’s normal,’ said Aumerle. ‘Even people he doesn’t fuck feel like he might kill them.’ 

Richard’s teeth began to loosen their hold on Hal’s neck. His hips rocked up against Hal’s; he twined his fingers with Hal’s, and kissed the raw wound he had left. Just when the swell of the _perche_ became so intolerable that Hal thought he might scream, Richard began to spend, and the tide of pleasure came in, washing the tension from Hal’s limbs, smoothing him back down against the mattress. Hal’s body was convinced, though he knew better, that the king was getting him with child, which pleased him like nothing he had felt before. He felt himself enclosing Richard perfectly, and praised nature even as he flouted it. He was going to come again: he could feel it working slowly to his surface. It would be good this time, and he wanted it so much. 

It had to have been Richard, Hal thought. There was no other on earth who could command pleasure so total. His stomach lurched, the tears that had come to his eyes spilt over, and he spent and at last spent well. It rose and crested and held him there at its height for an agonising moment and then he began to pulse from his centre outwards, like he was one huge martyr’s heart beating exposed in an open breast. 

Kissing Hal’s neck, Richard murmured, ‘Thank God, thank God. Praise God.’

* * *

In the second hour of their coupling it occurred to Hal that this was quite a vulnerable position for an unpopular king to be in. There were stories about people being murdered in the middle of breeding, and though Hal had never known of anyone it actually happened to, it was still a distinct possibility. Then again so was being murdered while you slept, and nobody could help sleeping; and there were at least four of Richard’s White Hart guards standing watch just outside of the door. Hal wondered if he should be more worried, but being bred contented him deeply, like a warm hearty supper with lots of wine. Though he had had nothing but water since the Easter feast, he had the feeling of numb drunken inertia, like he was weightless and had no need of ever moving again. 

Since the coupling could last six or eight hours, Richard had had the servants very gently shift him and Hal onto their sides. They lay curled up together, Hal dozing and loopy, Richard more alert but still sedate, propping his head up with one hand and running the other along Hal’s naked side, smoothing his palm down Hal’s thigh and then up to the tender skin covering his ribcage. Every hour or so Richard fell quiet and held Hal tight against him, and spent again, warming Hal’s blood. 

Guilty about having missed Terce and Sext, Richard brought his private chaplain up to pray None, and later Vespers: at first Hal was amazed that the chaplain would agree to lead prayers for two people actively committing sodomy, but as he thought back on his time at court he realised that Richard and his favourites held private prayers in the king’s bedchamber rather a lot. He was scandalised. He knew Richard fucked men, obviously, everybody knew that, it was just that it seemed especially cheeky to fuck while praying. At least the curtains were drawn shut about the bed; Richard could stroke the back of Hal’s hand and bugger him gently, keeping him drowsily complacent, as they rattled off their Glory Bes and Our Fathers.

Hal was experiencing, he recognised, a sort of mild madness: Richard’s body had convinced his body to take pleasure from an experience that would have otherwise been excruciating. The king was like that. His favour made you fall in love with him. Hal thought it was because Richard was only kind when he really felt kindly; that was his privilege as sovereign, and his worst vice. Hal had rarely been so sincere about anything, and he luxuriated in it now, this extraordinary occasion that had enabled him to ask plainly for what he wanted, and to be given it. If Hal’s father or grandfather were here, they would counsel him to take this intimacy as an opportunity, to demand or plead for the king to give him something. What he should really be asking about, he knew, was whether his father would be allowed to return to England and claim his inheritance when his grandfather died. But he didn’t want to: he didn’t want his father to come back, he wanted to stay with Richard forever. He wanted it as much as he had wanted his mother to come back after she died. 

Hesitantly Hal said, ‘My lord?’ 

‘Hmm?’ Richard stroked Hal’s hair, smoothing it where it had been mussed by his earlier frenzy. ‘Are you calling me “my lord” again? I wouldn’t want you to be too familiar, but you can call me “Richard” while I’m actually inside of you.’ 

‘Oh, okay. Richard, then.’ 

‘What were you going to say? You sounded like you were going to ask me something. Don’t be shy: this is no time for that.’

What else would he ask for, if not his father? Titles, lands? A plush military appointment? A castle? To go on crusade? For the first time since his father’s exile Hal felt like more than a captive, a bargaining chip that had got to be clothed and fed and kept busy lest he should begin to consider treason. If he could do anything in the world, Hal asked himself, what would he do? He thought perhaps he would be king, and the thought made him sad: he would be a better ruler than Richard, a better statesman and soldier, but he would not be so beautiful, or so divine. 

Hal said, ‘I love you.’ 

Richard said, ‘Mmm.’ 

He probably heard it a lot, sincerely and insincerely. Still, Richard didn’t strike Hal as the sort of man who grew tired of being loved. He struck Hal as the sort of man who needed it. If his father ever asked him how to kill Richard, Hal would tell him to lock Richard away and starve him of love. Hal felt that he had been sincere in saying it, but if Richard was usurped, he asked himself, would he love him enough to take his side? He thought perhaps not, and thought Richard must know that. Even then Richard went on stroking Hal’s curls. 

‘Would you make me,’ said Hal, ‘your heir?’ 

Richard’s hand wandered down to Hal’s wounded shoulder, and felt out the raw marks his teeth had made. He bent down and pressed his lips to the wound; Hal remembered the way Richard looked when he received the host, bowing his golden head and shutting his eyes. 

‘No, darling,’ said Richard, ‘but I forgive you for asking.’

* * *

Hal woke to see that the sky was dark and the room was firelit, and realised he had been deeply asleep. He had the impression Richard had been speaking to him, but he couldn’t sort out his dreams and his thoughts and the things he actually perceived. The drunken feeling of the coupling had faded; Hal’s limbs were sore, and he was deadly hungry, and he was just beginning to recognise how mad it was that he had done what he had done. Aumerle was gone, having left his book of hours on the chair by the window.

Patting Hal’s hip like he was a horse, Richard said, ‘It’s time to get up, my dear. It’s finished.’ 

‘What, already?’ 

‘Already! It’s been ages. I’d forgotten how long it takes. It’s been perfectly lovely, but I do have other things to do. And look, the staff have got a bath ready for us, so you can hop right in: no need to stand about all filthy.’ 

Having given Hal fair warning, Richard braced himself with a hand to Hal’s waist and withdrew his softened prick from him, then patted Hal again and got up. The large wooden tub had been situated in front of the fire, and across it lay a board spread with an assortment of light food, which made Richard exclaim just like he did when food had been brought up before. For Christ’s sake, thought Hal irritably, it’s like he thinks the whole infrastructure of his own court is just an exciting spontaneous gift to him, like there aren’t hundreds of people constantly scurrying about trying to anticipate his unpredictable desires. 

The servants averted their eyes as Hal hobbled, wet-thighed, to the tub; Richard watched him from where he sat, reviewing Hal with those wide thin heavy-lidded eyes. Hal had expected that Richard would look at him differently now, and was surprised to see that Richard looked the same as he did when he sat on his throne at a feast and let his eyes fall idly on whoever happened to be there. Being looked at like that had always made Hal’s ears burn. Situated comfortably in the bath, Hal rested his arms on his drawn-up knees and looked back at Richard, who was engaged in eating a little marzipan cake. He stared at Richard hard, trying to get Richard to look up and see him staring; Richard must have been able to see him out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t look up. Hal supposed there was no reason he would. Richard was always being looked at; if he looked back at everyone who looked at him he would spend all his days in looking. Hal motioned for a servant to fill his glass of wine, then knocked it back in one gulp and held the glass out again to be filled. 

After his bath Hal was dressed in the king’s clothes. With Richard’s braies covering his prick, Richard’s hose hiding his legs, Richard’s belt winding round his waist, Hal felt a closeness with him that he hadn’t felt even when Richard was coming inside of him. The gown was one Richard had picked out, an emerald-green silk that Richard said made Hal’s eyes look green, and when Hal was fully dressed Richard kissed him and told him he looked lovely.

‘The gown is a bit long on you,’ said Richard, who wore simple dark-blue velvet, ‘but if I give it to you, you’ll grow into it, won’t you? Why don’t you take it? Green isn’t my colour really.’ 

Richard and Hal went together to the chapel for Compline, and were thoroughly stared at. When it came time for the examination of conscience, Hal passed the silence mouthing a Pater Noster. Presently they bowed their heads and together said, ‘Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,’ which Hal thought was as good a confession as any. As they sang the Regina Caeli, Hal turned his head to look at Richard in profile, praying with his his eyes closed, his bitten fingers steepled, his hair falling into his face. The wound on Hal’s neck pulsed along with his heartbeat. The king opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Hal, and as their voices rose and fell through the final prodigious _alleluia_ the two of them were mirrored, holding each other’s gazes, until Hal looked away.

* * *


End file.
